104 - On my guts

Well, it's been a very long day, but I have nobody to blame but myself, because I chose to wake up at around two in the morning. I could've gone back to sleep, but instead, I decided I would finish off my new blog, get a Twitter account for Do you hate it too?, one for myself, and also create a fan page on Facebook. I also did some reading on conducting ethnographic research in past civilizations - it proved to be difficult to stay awake, but it's now more than eighteen hours later, and I'm still here.

For most of the day, I was feeling scared inside.

I am scared about how I will feel after I announce the launch of all those things, I don't know what I expect - if I want a lot of the attention, or if I might get freaked out by it. I was certainly freaked out when I found out that people were writing reviews about me without telling me. (I hate it when people read my blog but don't tell me.)

I often ask myself if I want to be recognized. I ponder it all the time, because it takes a lot of guts to be a person with a widely known name and personality. It takes guts to devote so much time to something like blogging, instead of doing something else that might be practical and productive. It takes guts to self-publish a book. And it takes guts to pour your thoughts, your memories and your feelings out on a public forum where just about anybody can (and actually is everybody that) reads it.

I'm not always sure I have the guts. Most of the time, I like to give off the impression that I do, but those who truly know me, know that I have a lot of fat question marks, sitting on broomsticks, flying around inside my head. I know I doubt my own ability. Worse yet, I doubt my own potential. All I can feel comfortable with admitting are my mistakes, my downsides, the reasons why not.

I wonder why that is. Maybe it's just the way I was brought up. My mother and father, if my memory serves me right, never really gave me impressionable advice on how to live my life. It was always something about what I did wrong, or what they did wrong, or how not to live my life. Don't point at strangers, don't use that bowl to microwave food, and don't ever get married. And maybe that's why that is the way I see things, I am always accustomed to seeing things in contradiction, my moral compass consisting of a giant list of double negatives.

lol. I chuckle at my own words. I admire my own phrasing. One positive thing about myself that I'm quite happy to admit is that I'm funny. Another positive thing is the fact that I'm good at writing - at least for my own entertainment. Sad, I know, but how often have you gone back to read your own written words and found it entertaining, huh?

Oh, Michael. Too often you look at yourself like you're another person, whenever you get depressed or high or tired or drunk. 

Is it a coping strategy? I think so. 

Is it weird? I think so.

Should I stop? I think so.

49 - You people are scaring me.

It's the weekend again, which means I can return to blogging with all the rest of you. I'm sure it's been a long week for all of you, but I hope you all have something to make you feel better this weekend, and something to look forward to this month.

How have I been doing? Well, I have a little something to share. It gets me a bit emotional, but in a good way, so here we go:

This blogging thing that I started three or four months ago has escalated to a point where the people in my real life are telling me I should publish books. They tell me they admire what I've done, that my writing is definitely very commercial and relevant.

I, with complete honesty, do not want to think about it. I think my skills are above average, but that is as far as I am willing to be proud of. It is not my humbleness that makes me think I'm not good enough, it is my practicality and my honesty that makes me doubt I am writer material. I am only seventeen. I am a student that achieves reasonably well in English class. But the reason people under twenty generally do not start publishing at that age is because you need many years of practice and experience in order to be great, to be truly fabulous, extraordinary and unique.

It's scary to have my mother dreaming of me succeeding as an author. Of course, an autobiography, novels and perhaps a 'Do You Hate It Too?' book have crossed my mind, but I am in disbelief. I understand that people in their youth can publish books. I get that I can do it if I worked at it.

But my heart isn't there right now. I want to publish books some day, but within the next three years seems a little soon and it scares me so much, I think I might pee a little. I'm damn frightened of that sort of fame.

Nonetheless, I still love the praise. In the blogging world, people care about me, and have found my writing and my life to be 'honest', 'beautiful', 'charming', 'humorous', 'mature beyond [my] years', 'excellent', 'interesting', 'thoughtful', 'thought-provoking' and 'emotional'. Someone two months ago said they respected me for being so honest, despite the fact that I don't believe I'm very respectable. I uncomfortably carry a high reputation on Blogger, when I don't reckon I am reputable.

This particular blog of mine urges me to be honest, and honestly, frankly, really, I believe I'm just a kid with familial, scholastic, romantic, and friend-related problems, with funny stories, with emotions, with a life like everybody else. I have always told people this piece of advice: you make your own life interesting. And that is what I've done, and what I hopefully will continue to do. I think anyone can do this and could write as well as I do.

Now, I actually get fanmail. Bloggers add me on Facebook. I actually have a social life that reaches further than it ever has before. People know my name, and think of my words and ideas while at work and school. People know me, and think I'm friggin' hilarious and wonderful. For most of the time, I don't believe I walk on the streets everyday, with people all over the world that expect me to write when I get home. I don't believe I've learned so much about so many mind-boggling things from being amongst such a talented, thoughtful cyberclique. I find it hard to believe in things that are this good.

And the rate at which all of this is growing is exponential.

Lately, I have frequently been stopping in the middle of my work to daydream.

And I find myself thinking, shit, what the Hell have I done to my life?

Is this really happening to me?